Laramie County School District Passes New Library Policy
Recently, there has been a debate across Wyoming and across the country over sexually inappropriate books in school libraries. Books have been found with graphic descriptions for sexual acts, and in some cases full-color illustrations.
Initially, Cheyenne’s Laramie County School District #1 attempted to address this controversy with a policy letting parents opt their children out of being able to check out certain books. This was far from ideal, however. Not only was the process confusing, parents had to individually select each specific book they weren’t comfortable with. This left already-busy parents burdened with having to research hundreds of books on their own.
As a consequence, very few parents took advantage of the opt-out policy. We believe that parents have a right to know what their kids are reading in school, and they know better than government entities, teachers, unions, or other parents when their children are ready to learn about sex. But making the process of exercising this right prohibitively difficult essentially took the right away.
Thankfully, the local school district in Cheyenne decided to do something about it.
On Monday night, (12/4/23) they voted to pass a new book policy gives parents the choice to opt-out from all books deemed sexually explicit. They are not required to do so. Parents who still want to identify each individual book continue to have that option. And if a parent thinks it’s okay for their kid to check out sexual material from the library, they have the freedom to allow that. The new policy simply empowers everybody to make the choice that they think is best for their own children.
At Wyoming Family Alliance, we believe it is very important that parents are empowered to make decisions that let them parent their own children. Groups opposed to this new policy spread a lot of information and unfairly labelled anyone not on their side “book banners,” or worse. But the truth is this policy empowers all parents to make their own choice. We are proud to have stood up for what is right.
And we can’t take the credit. We put out a call for parents in the district to attend and make their concerns heard, and we were floored by the response. Many dozens of concerned parents and citizens came out to encourage the board to do the right thing, and at the end of the meeting, the board passed the new policy.
This shows that just a little bit of action can lead to great results.
Thank you to the members of the LCSD1 board of trustees who put in many days and nights of hard work to create a new policy that benefits everyone! And thank you to everyone who came out Monday night to voice your support! Your presence made a difference.
Let’s pray that this can be a step in the right direction so that more school districts across Wyoming can take steps to protect children and empower parents to make informed decisions about how to raise their kids!
